13 Best Employee Monitoring Software [Free Options Included]

Employee monitoring software tracks and records employee activities on company devices, including application usage, website visits, and time spent on tasks. It aims to provide insights into employee productivity, data security, and compliance.

With the recent rise of remote and hybrid work worldwide, you need robust tools to ensure the productivity and security of your employees and company data outside of traditional office environments. Furthermore, it enables companies to prevent insider threats and ensure compliance with industry regulations.

To help you pick the right solution, I’ve analyzed 21 options and selected the following best employee monitoring software based on its AI capabilities, real-time monitoring features, and pricing.

• 1. Insightful: AI-powered Productivity Tracking for Remote Teams
• 2. Hubstaff: Tracking Software for Global Workforce
• 3. CleverControl: Available as Cloud and On-Premise
• 4. Time Doctor: Popular Workforce Analytics Tool
• 5. Monitask: Best for Project-Based Teams with Time Tracking
• 6. ActivTrak: Free Employee Monitoring Software
• 7. Controlio: Advanced Screen Monitoring with Stealth Mode
• 8. WorkTime: Privacy-focused GDPR & HIPAA-compliant Employee Tracking
• 9. Apploye: Remote Employee Monitoring with 100+ Features
• Show moreShow less

Employee Monitoring Software Comparison

Below is a quick comparison table of the main features of the employee monitoring software.

Now, check out the review of employee tracking tools with their highlighted features, pros and cons, and pricing information.

1. Insightful

Insightful improves your operational efficiency by 24% with its real-time actionable insights into your remote workforce. It offers deep productivity metrics for workflows, workloads, and work status, leading to boosted productivity for the entire team.

It provides visibility into workforce capacity so that you can make fast and accurate decisions on utilizing resources. The software helps you avoid burnout and increase engagement, thus ensuring employee satisfaction and making projects profitable.

Insightful shares instant alerts during any incident, enabling you to be aware of any insider threats as they happen. It also notifies you of unauthorized website and app usage, helping you prevent data leaks.

Its InsightsAI tool performs time-consuming tasks such as data analysis and reporting to save you time and effort. It answers complex workforce questions and shows workplace trends. Moreover, it offers data-rich automated productivity reports, as shown below, for individual and team analysis.

Insightful Features

• Productivity insights like focus time and trends.
• Capture time and attendance of remote and hybrid workers.
• Location-based insights to understand performance impact.
• Real-time data on apps and website usage.
• Integration with HRIS and project management tools.

Insightful Pricing

Insightful offers below pricing plans:

• Productivity Management: $6.40/seat/month
• Time Tracking: $8/seat/month
• Process Improvement: $12/seat/month
• Enterprise Solution: Custom

Get Insightful

2. Hubstaff

Whether your team works in an office, field, or any remote location, Hubstaff helps you track productivity and work progress. While Hubstaff offers web and mobile apps for hybrid and remote team management, it uses geofencing through GPS tracking for accurate time tracking of field workers.

Its integration support for apps like Asana, GitHub, ClickUp, Paymo, monday.com, Trello, Slack, Wrike, and Zoho Projects helps you run your business smoothly by letting you create streamlined workflows.

Hubstaff turns the tracked time into project and task-based timesheets as shown in the screenshot below, eliminating the need for tedious manual timesheet creation. Thus, you can ensure one-click approval and accurate billing, reducing system errors.

My most favorite feature of Hubstaff is its optional screenshots. You can set the screenshot settings to capture your screen once, twice, or thrice every ten minutes or completely disable this feature. You can even blur the screenshots to ensure privacy.

Hubstaff Features

• Web app, desktop apps, and Chrome extension for time tracking.
• Customizable dashboard with drag-and-drop widgets.
• 20+ reports on attendance, productivity, and tracked hours.
• Idle time detection to track work habits.
• Use SSL over HTTPS for storing screenshots.

Hubstaff Pricing

Hubstaff offers a 14-day free trial for you to explore its features. The paid plans are as follows:

• Starter: $4.99/seat/month
• Grow: $7.50/seat/month
• Team:$10/seat/month
• Enterprise: $25/seat/month

Get Hubstaff

3. CleverControl

CleverControl lets you have a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement in your organization. It focuses on knowing the employees so you can optimize your workflows and develop a thriving work environment.

Using CleverControl, you can oversee the application usage of your team, helping you locate training needs and get rid of unnecessary applications. It tracks individual user activity as shown in the following screenshot, so that you can flag potential overwork and ensure a work-life balance for your team.

It even tracks common terms that your team searches to reveal knowledge gaps and identify training opportunities. CleverControl’s Live Viewing is ideal for remote training and collaborative troubleshooting but should be used with explicit user consent and clear guidelines.

I like CleverControl’s AI Scoring feature that offers AI-powered employee analytics about your employee productivity by analyzing activity logs and productivity levels. It assists you to identify areas that need improvement and make data-driven decisions for an efficient workforce.

CleverControl Features

• Track individual performance to avoid unfair task distribution.
• Facial recognition to prevent unauthorized access.
• Track internet usage and block unproductive websites.
• Screenshots to get a visual summary of the day’s activities.
• Printer task monitoring for controlled use of office resources.

CleverControl Pricing

• Cloud-based: $4.70/PC/month
• On-premise: $7.90/PC/month

Get CleverControl

4. Time Doctor

Time Doctor offers productivity and performance visibility to your remote and in-office employees. It measures how your employees spend their time without being intrusive. By automatically verifying employee attendance and timesheets, it brings accountability to your team.

Its timed screenshots and screencast features help you with audit trail for compliance and security. Users can even delete the screenshots if they want to. Managers can see what the team is doing in real-time with access to the website and application usage records.

Time Doctor provides you with real-time email notifications for performance triggers so you can catch bottlenecks immediately and get productivity back on track. It comes with break tracking and offline tracking features, allowing you to get complete productivity reports.

I like its user-controlled desktop app that allows your team members to manage their time wisely. It silently tracks time in the background without hampering concentration and productivity.

Time Doctor Features

• Transparent and accurate time tracking to identify work patterns.
• Work-life balance metrics for employee wellbeing.
• Track application usage to remove unused software licenses.
• Inactivity alert when the employees lose focus.
• Integration with 60+ PM, CRM, and communication tools.

Time Doctor Pricing

Time Doctor offers the following paid plans:

• Basic: $6.70/user/month
• Standard: $11.70/user/month
• Premium: $16.70/user/month
• Enterprise: Custom

Get Time Doctor

5. Monitask

Monitask empowers you to promote responsibility, transparency, and accountability regarding project timelines and deadlines. Monitoring team activities enables you to identify and eliminate time-wasting activities, which are vital to achieving business goals.

With the help of Monitask, you can control employee access to non-essential sites, minimizing their distractions and ensuring a productive work environment. Ideal for staffing agencies and consultants, it promotes effective communication and mitigates the risk of missed deadlines.

It protects your data against breaches and potential threats with IP tracking, VPN tracking, and monitoring user locations. Besides mitigating risks, these features improve network performance.

Monitask’s comprehensive reporting feature caught my attention. It generates accurate reports, as shown below, on time entry, productivity, projects, idle time, and internet usage, which can be used for audits and other regulatory compliances.

Monitask Features

• Accurate time tracking for precise resource allocation.
• Application and website detection to identify risky ones.
• Streamlined time recording for simplified payroll.
• Instant notifications during critical events.
• Integrates with CRM, PM, scheduling, and collaboration apps.

Monitask Pricing

Monitask offers 20% off on annual plans. The plans are listed below.

• Pro: $4.99/user/month
• Business: $6.99/user/month
• Enterprise: Custom

Get Monitask

6. ActivTrak

ActivTrak offers better visibility into remote and on-site employees, allowing you to make data-driven remote and hybrid work policies. As it lets you uncover poorly integrated systems, you can discover the challenges in operations and communications and resolve them. Its team pulse feature, as shown in the screenshot below, displays the productivity of the team in a way that allows you to easily figure out its productivity.

ActivTrak emphasises workforce policy and compliance. It performs A/B testing and impact analysis to reveal how your remote or hybrid work policy affects work habits and employee well-being. It also ensures offsite compliances by identifying risky apps and alerting you whenever an employee deviates from the standard procedure.

Its customizable dashboard is my personal favorite. You can tailor it based on your requirements and preferences. Use it to view activity category usage, communication and collaboration trends, headcount planning, workforce capacity trend, and performance indicators.

ActivTrak Features

• Team-level activity and productivity tracking.
• Location-based productivity data for hybrid team policies.
• Work durations and trends for remote and in-office employees.
• Actionable alerts for security threats such as use of external HDD.
• Integrates with HCM, project management, and communication apps.

ActivTrak Pricing

ActivTrak offers a free forever plan. Besides the free plan, it offers the below paid plans as well:

• Essential: $10/user/month
• Essential Plus: $15/user/month
• Professional: $19/user/month

Get ActivTrak

7. Controlio

Сontrolio enables you to track employee performance for managing their workload and improving organizational policies. As you get valuable insights into your team’s daily workflows without infringing their privacy, you can take necessary steps to improve their productivity.

It not only tracks time and attendance of your employees but also lets you set up alert notifications for various events. For example, you can create flexible rules for organization, teams, and individuals so that you get notified during employee misconduct, distracting websites/applications access, and excessive idle time.

I like the scheduled reporting feature of Controlio. It lets you create reporting tasks to generate daily, weekly, and monthly. You can customize the reports with date range, report type, and format. The Controlio dashboard below describes the productivity score, active time, online sessions, etc.

Controlio Features

• Real-time employee activity monitoring.
• Work hour analysis to detect underworking and overworking staff.
• Visibility into apps and website usages.
• Block harmful and distractive websites.
• Optional screen recording to detect labor misconduct.

Controlio Pricing

Controlio offers live demo and a 14-day free trial. The paid plans are as follows:

• Cloud: $7.99/seat/month
• On-Premises: Custom
• Private Cloud: Custom

Get Controlio

8. WorkTime

WorkTime is a compliant employee monitoring software, particularly suitable for IT companies,
financial organizations, law, and accounting firms. Its tracking facility is not restricted to time tracking; it measures employee productivity and analyzes screens and application usage.

It tracks both active and idle time of an employee, providing valuable insights into productivity and workflow efficiency. You can set goals for active time and see how much progress your team has made. WorkTime compares the time one spends in the office and a remote location to see where one has been more productive.

In my opinion, WorkTime’s Leaderboard feature is very useful. It utilizes the employee monitoring data to create a leaderboard as shown below on various metrics, such as best department, best employee, productivity, distraction score, active time, attendance, and more. It gives rise to a sense of competitiveness among the employees, benefiting your organization with better efficiency.

WorkTime Features

• Remote and in-office employee monitoring based on IP addresses.
• Monitor website usage and social media activities.
• Attendance tracking with login/logout time.
• Overtime monitoring to detect false overtime.
• Non-invasive monitoring of the webcam and microphone.

WorkTime Pricing

WorkTime offers 2 months free if you take their annual plan. Its pricing plans are as follows:

• Free: $0/employee/month
• Basic: $6.99/employee/month
• Premium: $8.99/employee/month
• Enterprise: $10.99/employee/month

Get WorkTime

9. Apploye

Do you know that you can improve your employee productivity by 20%? That’s if you use Apploye to track the time and efficiency of your team. Not only that, but you can also compare the performances of employees working remotely to find the most efficient ones.

Moreover, Apploye enables you to assign tasks to your remote workers and monitor their progress in detail. As you track their working time, you can use the same data to manage their payroll after approving the timesheet.

It generates advanced reports on time and activity, manual time entry, and apps usage that you can export in PDF and CSV files and share with other stakeholders. It has Android and iOS mobile apps that employees can use to track time and view the dashboard.

I find its live feed feature very interesting. As you can see in the screenshot below, it tells you what all your remote workers are doing at this moment. You can even get an instant screenshot from their computer to verify if they are tracking their time correctly, or if they are working on the assigned tasks.

Apploye Features

• Daily, weekly, monthly, and custom Timesheet approval for payroll.
• Take 3 screenshots in 10 minutes.
• App usage tracking with detailed time logs.
• Track URL to get complete list of visited webpages.
• Idle time monitoring to locate counterproductive employees.
  

Apploye Pricing

Apploye offers a 10-day free trial. The paid plans are as follows:

• Standard: $2.5/user/month
• Elite: $3.5/user/month

Get Apploye

Honourable Mentions

In addition to the above, the following employee monitoring software deserves honorable mention.

10. Kickidler — Comes with productivity analysis, time-tracking, and self-monitoring tools. Pricing starts from $9.99/user/month.

11. EmpMonitor —  Offers features like team activity analysis, productivity tracking, and automated reporting. Pricing starts from $3/user/month.

12. Teramind — Lets you visualize user activities, monitor individual employees, and track users on local machines and servers. Pricing starts from $14/user/month.

13. Timechamp — Allows automatic tracking of productive and idle time, screen recording & screenshots, and keystroke monitoring. Pricing starts from $3.9/user/month.

What Is Employee Monitoring Software?

Employee monitoring software empowers employers to track, record, and manage their employee activities. It lets you monitor employee behavior and activities, such as time spent on a task, website visits, and application usage. While it serves multiple purposes, its primary focus is to enhance productivity, maintain compliance, and ensure the security of company data. It provides insights into potential security threats and regulatory requirements to help you identify areas for improvement.

8 Reasons to Use Employee Monitoring Software

As a productivity-focused organization, you have several reasons to use employee monitoring software, such as tracking productivity and monitoring their activity. Here are the top reasons to use this application.

1. Time Tracking

Accurate time tracking is essential for efficient project and task management. Especially if you are managing a remote team, you must know how your employees are spending their working hours. Employee monitoring software functions as a time tracking software to provide detailed records of employee work hours so that you know how they allocate and spend their time. It eliminates the need to maintain manual and erroneous timesheets while allowing you to identify areas for improvement and optimize resource allocation.

2. Productivity Analysis

Tracking employee activity offers you a comprehensive understanding of their productivity levels. This data allows you to provide targeted feedback and ensure employees focus on high-priority tasks. Monitoring software identifies patterns of activity and inactivity, highlighting potential bottlenecks and areas of inefficiency for better productivity. 

3. Website and Application Tracking

By internet and application usage tracking, you can identify potential security risks, prevent unauthorized software usage, and ensure that employees are using company resources for work-related purposes. It identifies the most used and least used applications, allowing for better software spending.

4. Keystroke Logging

Since keystroke logging provides a detailed record of employee keyboard activity, it is valuable for security purposes. Companies can detect unauthorized access to sensitive information or identify potential insider threats by checking the keystroke logs. It helps to reconstruct a security breach event to identify areas where employees may need additional training.

5. Email Monitoring

Email monitoring is a mandatory approach to ensure compliance with company policies and legal regulations. It enables you to detect inappropriate or unauthorized communications and prevent data leaks. If your business deals with sensitive information or operates in highly regulated industries, you must use an employee monitoring software for this feature.

6. File Transfer and Document Tracking

Organizational files and documents contain sensitive company and customer data, which makes it crucial for you to track file transfers and document access. Monitoring software lets you see how employees handle and share these files. This feature helps you maintain strict data security protocols while preventing unauthorized data transfers and potential data breaches.

7. Screen Capture

If your team is working remotely, screen capture functionality lets you record employee screen activity. Besides providing a visual record of their work to improve company processes, it functions as a training material to monitor compliance and investigate potential security incidents.

8. User Behavior Analytics

By user behavior analysis, you can identify potential risks to your workforce. It helps you to detect unusual activity patterns that may indicate security threats or employee misconduct. Monitoring software offers work pattern insights, such as employee interaction with software and systems, enhancing business operations.

5 Benefits of Using Employee Tracking Software

Among various benefits of using employee monitoring solutions, here are the top five picks.

1. Productivity Monitoring

Employee monitoring tools offer detailed insights into how employees spend their time during work hours. It tracks application usage, website visits, and even idle time, allowing you to identify patterns and potential productivity bottlenecks.

For example, if someone spends a significant amount of time on non-work-related websites or applications, managers can address these issues through training, policy adjustments, or resource reallocation. It also helps you identify top performers and their work habits, based on which you can establish best practices for your team to increase their efficiency.

2. Workforce Performance Insights

Employee tracking software provides valuable insights into the quality of work that enables you to better manage the workforce. It collects and analyzes various performance metrics, such as project completion rates, task turnaround times, and customer interaction data. You can use it to identify areas where employees may need additional support or training. 

It sheds light on individual and team performance, utilizing which you can make data-driven decisions regarding promotions, performance reviews, and resource allocation. Ultimately, it enables a more objective and fair evaluation of employee contributions.

3. Remote Work Management

The software empowers you by maintaining oversight and ensuring productivity with remote work monitoring. If you have a remote or hybrid team, the visibility into remote employees’ activities helps you understand their workflow and identify potential challenges.

Features like time tracking, activity logs, and project management integrations ensure effective coordination and collaboration, as well as adherence to company policies and security protocols, even when employees are working from different locations. 

4. Insider Threat Detection

Employee tracking software helps you detect and prevent insider threats. It identifies all unusual and suspicious behavior, such as unauthorized access to sensitive data, excessive file downloads, or communication with external parties through real-time monitoring of employee activity.

It instantly notifies you of potential security breaches, allowing you to take immediate action. Thus, you can protect confidential organizational information and maintain data integrity. Moreover, you can use it to investigate security incidents and identify the root cause to strengthen security measures and prevent future breaches.

5. Cost & Resource Optimization

Employee tracking software helps organizations optimize costs and allocate resources more effectively by providing relevant insights. It can identify underutilized resources or redundant tasks so that the managers can streamline workflows, improve project planning and budgeting, and avoid unnecessary expenses. Moreover, monitoring software usage lets you identify unused licenses or subscriptions, leading to cost savings. 

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